Keeping The Dark Lord (on his toes)

Chapter - 20. The test ( 31 July 1994 )

Harry was packing the last of his newly bought things, all still sealed to guard against his scent, in preparation when he felt Death enter the room. He was getting pretty good at sensing when the entity would appear, or so he would’ve made himself believe if the entity wasn’t currently humming loud enough to wake the dead.

A sense of foreboding swept through his body and gave him goosebumps…Death never hummed…he turned around slowly, half expecting the entity to give him a jump-scare. Maybe the entity was hanging around mortals too much recently?

But no, nothing jumped out at him, instead, the entity held out his arm and Harry carefully took the letter and box. “Uhm thanks?” The entity nodded and disappeared with an amused laugh, leaving Harry to wonder whether it was safe to open the package at all.

He decided to go for the letter first, only to freeze as he spotted the name. “How…?” A groan left him as he realized why the entity had chuckled. Apparently, it was fun to interfere with his plans, but if he were to be quite honest with himself, it was nice to receive a letter back from Voldemort and he wouldn’t mind if it continued...depending on the content that is.

He read the letter and was pleasantly surprised by the contents of it, but it was no surprise that the man had figured out the MoD thing so easily, the hints had all been there. He decided to look at the presents before taking a closer look at the test that Voldemort had written about.

He opened the present labeled as ‘Harry’ first, even though it wasn’t mentioned in the letter, and was surprised to find a shrunken travel case and an open return ticket to anywhere in the world. He knew he wouldn’t use it soon, and he had enough money to do so at any given time, but the message was loud and clear, Voldemort didn’t intend to keep Harry Potter locked away as he’d feared.

It was a nice sentiment and it made him even more excited for the days ahead, even if Voldemort wouldn’t know that he was in disguise. He turned to enlarge the other contents of the box and had to jump back to avoid being flattened by the mountain of presents…not that he succeeded.

He came up sputtering and blinking in shock as he glanced around him in a daze, this was Voldemort’s idea of only a few presents?!

He finally managed to pull himself free of the newly formed mountain and picked up the one closest to him. Had the man raided a shop in a hurry or had he been saving these up for a while now?

A familiar chuckle clued him in that Death hadn’t completely disappeared and he turned around to glare at the entity. “What’s so funny? I can’t imagine that having the Master of Death die due to suffocation by presents would look good on your resumé!”

The entity merely made himself comfortable on his bed and Harry sighed in frustration. Several footsteps echoed down the hall before pausing at his door and Harry looked up to find Severus, Salazar, Sirius all staring at the mountain of presents in shock…though it was Severus that managed to pull himself together first.

“I take it that the Dark Lord finally managed to send you some of the gifts he’s been collecting?” Harry’s eyes zeroed in on the man in suspicion as he placed his hands on his hips before gesturing towards the pile with his right hand, “You knew about all of this?!”

The man chuckled and nodded, though he didn’t move closer to the bed as he noticed Death on it. Salazar had no such problems though as he walked over and made himself comfortable at the edge of the bed. “Severus told me about it after about the fourth time the Death Eaters were sent out on random errands to retrieve certain objects…the few ones he didn’t retrieve himself… and the objects never left the castle again so many Death Eaters have speculated that they were meant for his cons-“